How many tears are too many??? or Winnetou is right...

No, the subject of this blog is not a sad one... on the contrary, as i was shedding tears today i realized that it has been a long time- probably almost a year that i felt so sad and ironically that makes me happy. Why??? Part of my disease is the cutting of unnecessary energy and emotions like crying use energy. My body needed every morsel of energy for maintaing its functioning therefore i did no longer have any feelings of sadness. This is no longer the case and that means if i touch things that have happened in the past that i felt sad about or hurt i can now cry about them. No, i cant let go of the things of the past. not yet. but the day is near... and i just feel tired and emotionally drained today. not more not less.

I bought a little funny book today for my husband that has the title How would Winnetou have decided (Winnetou is the most famous movie-American Indian that Germany ever produced) and it contains little fairy tale type of stories about being succesful. And of course one chaper is entitled "Winnetous rule no 5 : Always try and help yourself." The short sentence that the reader is supposed to memorize is: If you are looking for a helping hand, look first at the end of your right arm. Now that is new to me. Arent all the self help books always telling me that in order to change behaviour i have to learn how to ask others for help??? Both is true, but i like the aspect that Winnetou states that no problem can be solved solely by relying on the big manitoo (AKA God, Buddha....) entirely. For self centred people like me i like being helped and yell at them for treating me like a needy person.. so i want to visualize me having a right hand and a manitoo and then.... i smile and think YES WE CAN!!!

the places you will go (again)

i just learned something today.... it is never too late to start anew.. yes i know this is a fact but one thing is to know that intellectually another thing is to feel it. I was strolling around outside today and all of a sudden i became aware that i have been given the fantastic opportunity to redifine myself completely. I can now grab life by its horns and become a new me. Correctly spoken i would even say i have the chance to become a me since i was entirely defining myself before based on my achievements and/or looks. Now i feel a lot more vulnerable but i am not as scared of that anymore. I am ready to face my past in a way that i can feel past wounds but then to accept them as being part of the past. I dont know what the future brings but i know that all i really can live is this moment, and i love this moment. i would even go as far as to laugh about myself because today again, my short term memory loss has led me to forget a bag with something somwhere. now i can go back tomorrow to the same shops trying to find it.... how fun is that to revisit the past.... hahah.

May you be less forgetful but just as optimistic as i have been today!

Real power

Today, i just would like to share a quote i found in o magazine: Real power is usually unspectacular a simple setting aside of fear that allows the free flow of love. But it changes everything."

Not only do i really think it is true... i also firmly believe that this is one of the most important lessons in life. When i think of people i admire because of their power then it is people like oprah winfrey, but also small town heros like my best friend who fights her disease every day. I admire everybody where i can see a quest for life that is shaped by being cuious and brave. To be brave is something that empowers (once you actually dare to....) me very much.

May you all be brave today and like me change a little thing....

wherever you go there you are...

it is sunday morning and i have a story on my heart. i woke up very early this morning and decided to not get up but instead to listen to an audiobook with the great title "wherever you go there you are" by one of my favorite teachers Jon Kabat Zinn. he is the founder of the stress reduction clinic in Boston and a world leader in the field of meditatiion and its benefits for body and mind. Anyways, go read or listen to the book if you want to find out more about him. As i was listening i fell back asleep probably after half an hour. When i woke up i had to laugh that a book like this is soooo boring that i fall asleep. then i rewound and thought well, meditation is about knowing who and where and what you are and to be ok with that. To fall back asleep could then be interpreted as "at ease and content with herself, therefore back to sleep". This thought is a good one for me because it has been a long time since i felt at ease. Then another thought, a vicious one , entered my mind - meditation doesnt help you and you will never learn it... so i dont know why you are even listening to the thing..." Bad thought, not helpful.

Meditation has been hard for me but there have been times in my life where i benefited from it. The mere conscious making effort of eg when you take a walk, how you walk, how your feet step in front of each other, and then going more and more into details, (eg my right foot starts walking by attaching the heel to the floor, then i can feel my sole of my foot getting into contact with the earth, then my small toe... )leads in my case to me not only slowing down my walk but also to all of a sudden feel more, for example the coldness on my face... and i am then getting really focused. After approx. 5 min of doing this, and believe me it has been sooo hard not to get distracted or if distracted to just let the thought go and start again.... , i usually have forgotten worrisome thoughts or dangerous comments from my disease.

Yet this morning instead of "achieving" another level in the book, i fell asleep. And I am happy with the fact that meditation this morning was a great idea because i could sleep another 2 hours happily. And think it is funy too...

Hard to stay focused

No, i am not writing something negative this morning. I am no longer allowing the myriad of negative thoughts that run through my brain roads to dominate me. The title is just a mindfulness exercise. I am writing something and immediately, i attribute things with it. I write the fact that sometimes it is hard to stay focused. The closet of "you will never make it" or "you used to be so much better at that" or even "if you did this and that it wouldnt be so hard but..." opens. But i read in a mindfulness exercise that there is another closet availabel that you open you put the thought in and you close it. And you go on. Some, including me have no problem in having a lot of available closets for comfortable, pleasing thoughts (which ironically translates in my case into self destructive thoughts because they feel familiar to me) but if it comes to uncomfortable, things, i label them soooooo soon. Yet it is just a thought. One of 60000 a day. Nothing spectacular, nothing special. A thought. Just a thought. So i feel more at peace knowing that it is hard to focus sometimes and that is neither good nor bad it just is. I am curious to find out what other thoughts are going to pop up in my brain today and i am ready to let them go and not holding on to them, trying to figure out in what closet i should put them.
May you have a lot of empty closets that close easily available today.

true power

hi,
i was listening to an american author this morning who mentioned the following quote" if you want to feel empowerede, use your power". I observed my reaction to this. First i thought critically: well, thats one of those typical housewife-in-mind quotes.. then i paused. Because i had caught myself once again in the trap of labeling ... so i pressed the rewind button for my brain (believe me there is one, just hard to find...) and listened to the words again. This time i noticed that i didnt like the quote. Why??? Because it tells you that everybody has some power in himself no matter how powerless he or she might feel. That statement is nice. But not for me. Because at the moment i am working hard on recreating (or creating....) a self esteem that is not based on outside achievements, image or results but on finding my true inner worth and this quotes addresses some of my issues. In my sick world my self esteem has been based on the pillars of pleasing others to get love, ED, and producing results. The pillar of ED replaced such important issues like self acceptance, social confidence.... and i did not notice it at all!!! so being the impulsive me, i said i was going to tear the ED pillar to pieces, with so much anger i intended to make dust out of him. Guess what, i was told and believe it that this doesnt work that way, at the moment, ED has maybe a crack in the pillar but not more... and it will be a long time before some of the pillar can be blown up. And only if I find oother pillars that i will be able to strengthen. One of the most difficult for me will be self acceptance. There i could use some empowerment. And then this quote is telling me that the power lies already within me - Where is it??? I have no idea. And this doesnt feel good. So that is why i dont like the quote But....#
it is a truly inspiring quote since it implies that even though i dont know where the power is (maybe in my toes.....) i will be able to boost my power level once i found it. Or maybe i dont even have to find it and just wait to feel it.
I hope all of you out there are able to identify their power source and are able to use it today.

i am back!!!

hi

to all my friends, yep i am back. After a long period of no writing blogs, partly because of my disease partly because i wanted to reflect whether i really want to share thoughts with others and the reason whhy , i have had the urge to come back. it is good for me. So i will structure my day to include some blog time over the next weeks where i hopefully contribute to making myself and others happy or reflective. not angry. Updating myself, i have checked into a clinic 2 weeks ago because my addiction to not eating and this killing myself slowly and steadily has gotten so strong that i saw no other solution. i hate myself for doing that because it feels like i am so selfish that i prefer to leave my family behind and ease into the nice clinic life. STOP!!!!!!!!! This i just realize is actually my disease talking. It tells me this to make me feel bad. So now i will show you and me the healthy voice.... i have checked into the clinic because i want to learn to fight my disease and to live a healthy happy life which will translate into being able to fulfill my life as a wife and mother and friend much better. This is the truth. It is hard to fight the diseases voice. Sometimes impossible. For all of you who dont know, my disease is called ED, eating disorder, it is male and vicious. (Not all men are vicious but this one is). ED is my best friend and my worst enemy. ED loves me because he controls me. ED hates me because i fight back now.. ED is the most trustworthy person because he never cheats on me. ED is always available 24/7. ED is my worst critic and he is never satisfied with myself. No matter how little i ate he will still find something. In short words he is a jerk that deserves to be kicked out of my brain. It is not so easy because over the years he mutated and is sometimes even for me hard to recognize. It is easier written than done to get rid of him. In this clinic i am learning that it is ok to have ED in my head probably all my life. The art is to not let him talk loud to me to not have him control my behaviour anymore. He might be able to control my thoughts but not my behaviour anymore. This is why i am here. This is why i need help. And it is ok to ask for help even for MS. PERFECT!!!! In my next weeks, the blogs will certainly evolve around ED - he loves that so i will try and make sure that every blog will end with a weapon against him. So today my weapon is

I have friends and supporters and a family. All of them love me the way i am not the way i look. All of them agree that i am sick and look sick. All of them want me to get better. I love my supporters and i want them to know that i am fighting.